[Fork] Asuswrt-Merlin 374.43 LTS releases (Archive)

[RADDY1993]

'Performance' is a pretty open descriptor. Overall, the performance should be about the same....some people see a bit of improvement on wireless.

I recently re-wrote the traditional QoS, so it will be different than the current Merlin (so far the reports have been positive and it's been viewed as an improvement).

I might give it a try can i just upload like Merlin or do i need the tool ?

 

[petrmenzel]

The following routers are supported by this firmware: N16, N66U, AC66U, AC56U, AC68U (Rev A1,A2,B1) (Rev C1 is NOT supported), and AC68P (and the retail and color versions, R and W, of each router)

Hi, what about support for DSL N66U. I know that there is this DSL. But I am not using it and I am using WAN connection only. Thx for answer. P.

 

[Wutikorn]

Hi, what about support for DSL N66U. I know that there is this DSL. But I am not using it and I am using WAN connection only. Thx for answer. P.

Neither this fork or RMerlins's firmware officially support any DSL models. However, one claims that he was able to flash RT-AC68U AsusWRT Merlin firmware to DSL-AC68U and successfully use the router as RT-AC68U(use LAN port as WAN port instead of DSL). But I couldn't make it working myself as you can see in the comment, but you can try.

 

[john9527]

I might give it a try can i just upload like Merlin or do i need the tool ?

See the first post in this thread.....if a recent Merlin, the recovery tool, and always a factory reset.

 

[RADDY1993]

See the first post in this thread.....if a recent Merlin, the recovery tool, and always a factory reset.

All up and running , could you share some advice on wireless settings such as Channel bandwidth and Wireless Mode, also QoS and the rough % of bandwidth i should enter. Thanx for the Firmware and the answering of my above questions.

 

[jrmwvu04]

QoS and the rough % of bandwidth i should enter

For traditional QoS, the first step is to find out what your available bandwidth is - actually, not ISP advertised. The speed test(s) of your choice will point you there. It's worth noting that if your speed varies, such as slower during peak times, you get better results using the slowest top speeds you reliably get.

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest
http://speedof.me/

The second step depends on the first. Through extensive testing, poking, and prodding I have arrived at 87.5% of max as the sweetest of sweet spots. I set the upload and download caps at that percentage.

Start there and if you have more questions/issues, feel free to ask.

 

[Marc Aronson]

Hi, I have an Asus RT-N53 router. Will this firmware work with that N53?

Marc

 

[jrmwvu04]

Hi, I have an Asus RT-N53 router. Will this firmware work with that N53?

Marc

It will not.

 

[RADDY1993]

For traditional QoS, the first step is to find out what your available bandwidth is - actually, not ISP advertised. The speed test(s) of your choice will point you there. It's worth noting that if your speed varies, such as slower during peak times, you get better results using the slowest top speeds you reliably get.

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest
http://speedof.me/

The second step depends on the first. Through extensive testing, poking, and prodding I have arrived at 87.5% of max as the sweetest of sweet spots. I set the upload and download caps at that percentage.

Start there and if you have more questions/issues, feel free to ask.

Cheers for your answer, my lowest results after 10 speed tests are Down-27.27 and Up-9.35 whats the best way to work out the correct percentage of 87,5

 

[MaxForce]

Hi ,I use with satisfaction this fork,thank you John
But I have a question :
Is this firmware safe and secure as the original one? Has it all the security update from the newer firmwares ?


Inviato dal mio A0001 utilizzando Tapatalk

 

[conquer22]

Nothing changed that would affect youtube and it works fine for me. What problem are you having?

Thanks for a reply. Youtube could not handle to play well at high res(auto mode). It randomly tried to produce high res when having enough buffering but it was only for few seconds. When I forced to select higher res, it just stopped long time for bufferring.

I have been happy with your current release. I will give a try again on your next release then

 

[jrmwvu04]

Cheers for your answer, my lowest results after 10 speed tests are Down-27.27 and Up-9.35 whats the best way to work out the correct percentage of 87,5

I'd start with 23.5 down and 8 up. You can enter it in the GUI with the decimal. Try it out for a bit. Benchmarks are ok but also run though some real world scenarios. The default QoS rules are a great starting point, but you may want to tweak it or add some depending on your use case.

 

[Gravityz]

just a quick question regarding system log
i am currently experimenting with wifi presence detection which is filling up the system log with crontab entries(but works very well)
Will the systemlog overwrite old messages eventually or do i need to clean out the systemlog from time to time(and can i do this with a script command)

 

[ColinTaylor]

Will the systemlog overwrite old messages eventually

Yes, the router will cycle the log files.

 

[john9527]

just a quick question regarding system log
i am currently experimenting with wifi presence detection which is filling up the system log with crontab entries(but works very well)
Will the systemlog overwrite old messages eventually or do i need to clean out the systemlog from time to time(and can i do this with a script command)

Yes, the syslog will take care of itself.

You can also reduce the 'noise' from running the cron jobs by setting the cron loglevel (documented in the Merlin_Fork_Options.txt file). If you

nvram set cron_loglevel=9
nvram commit

the only thing logged in the syslog will basically just be the output generated by the script you are running.

 

[john9527]

Hi ,I use with satisfaction this fork,thank you John
But I have a question :
Is this firmware safe and secure as the original one? Has it all the security update from the newer firmwares ?


Inviato dal mio A0001 utilizzando Tapatalk

I've been thinking about how to best answer this question. For security, I watch for documented exposures in both the ASUS code and the other open source components and update where applicable.

On the ASUS side, much of what they are doing is no longer directly applicable to this fork since the authentication method has changed. Things that are get backported and Merlin is kind enough to alert me to things he sees that may be applicable as he does his merges. Additionally, I've made a couple passes through the code on my own to close buffer exposure overflows.

On the open source side, things like OpenVPN, OpenSSL, dropbear, etc. are kept up to date.

The best I can say is that I actually use this fork and don't feel as if I'm unnecessarily exposed.

One last thing I'll mention, is that there are some options on the fork that help with security that aren't available on the latest ASUS/Merlin.
- You can change the default http port (in addition to the https port) for the gui access. This can provide some additional protection from malware exploits.
- All the gui login/logout activity is logged in the syslog. If you review the syslog periodically, it's pretty easy to see if someone is trying to attack via the gui.

 

[Gravityz]

Thanks John and Colin
Working like a charm (after a reboot)

Yes, the syslog will take care of itself.

You can also reduce the 'noise' from running the cron jobs by setting the cron loglevel (documented in the Merlin_Fork_Options.txt file). If you

nvram set cron_loglevel=9
nvram commit

the only thing logged in the syslog will basically just be the output generated by the script you are running.

 

[punchsuckr]

John, I just changed the management gui port to an ephemeral port and when I clicked apply, the loading popup kept on spinning with no percentage displayed. Had to refresh the page to get to the gui again and didn't know whether the port was changed or not. It was changed and i reached the page with the new port in the url.
Then after a reboot the port was reset to 8443.. I don't know if this is supposed to happen or not but I tried changing it again and the same thing happened again.

 

[john9527]

John, I just changed the management gui port to an ephemeral port and when I clicked apply, the loading popup kept on spinning with no percentage displayed. Had to refresh the page to get to the gui again and didn't know whether the port was changed or not. It was changed and i reached the page with the new port in the url.
Then after a reboot the port was reset to 8443.. I don't know if this is supposed to happen or not but I tried changing it again and the same thing happened again.

Well, yes, if you change the port of the current connection (connected via http and change http port, or via https and change the https port), you'll get the spinner or the port change notification screen and need to close and reopen the browser with the new port. Makes sense if you think about it.

Not sure I follow what you are saying about the port reset.....port 8443 is the default port for https and you can't use it for http if that's what you tried (even if you don't have https active).

 

[punchsuckr]

Well, yes, if you change the port of the current connection (connected via http and change http port, or via https and change the https port), you'll get the spinner or the port change notification screen and need to close and reopen the browser with the new port. Makes sense if you think about it.

Not sure I follow what you are saying about the port reset.....port 8443 is the default port for https and you can't use it for http if that's what you tried (even if you don't have https active).

It would've made sense and I wouldn't have posted here if I had reached the port change notification screen. When I set the https port to 52792 and hit apply, that screen was not displayed in this case, with just the loading being displayed and not going anywhere for a long time until I manually refreshed the screen.
Also, afterward when I rebooted it, the port was back to 8443 again. Tried a second time with the exact same behavior which is when I decided to report.